Kerry Packer dies

Reporter: Emma Alberici

MAXINE McKEW: On a day that's normally dominated by sporting news - the latest on the Sydney-Hobart race and the drama at the MCG - came the shock announcement that the man who helped revolutionise our approach to big sporting events, Kerry Packer, had died at his Sydney home overnight. Appropriately, it was the Nine Network which broke the news this morning. A key asset in the vast PBL group, Channel Nine's success over the years owed a great deal to Mr Packer's personal vision of a prestigious stable of stars and high-profile events-programming. Kerry Packer amassed a personal fortune of $7 billion and was recently listed by Forbes magazine as the 94th richest person in the world. The business community is still absorbing the news and what it means for an empire that now controls television, magazines, gaming interests and financial services. Mr Packer handed over the running of Publishing and Broadcasting Limited to his son James in 1998 but right up until Christmas Kerry Packer was said to be still involved with his businesses on a day-to-day basis. There were tributes today from the Prime Minister, from the country's sporting greats and from business colleagues. Former 'Bulletin' writer and one-time legal adviser Malcolm Turnbull, now the federal member for Wentworth, summed it up this way on his website: "Kerry Packer, he said, loved winning. It did not matter whether it was in business, at the casino or on the sporting field." Our coverage tonight of a man who had more wins than losses considers the Packer legacy. First, here's finance editor Emma Alberici.

KERRY PACKER (QUOTES FROM HIS CAREER): Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer. I appear here this afternoon reluctantly. I don't know what to say about Victor, except that when I heard Victor had been shot, I cried. And I don't cry often. Leave me alone. Get out of my way. You're sitting here under parliamentary privilege dragging that up again, having been exonerated by the Parliament of this country. I think you've got a damn hide!

PAUL BARRY, BIOGRAPHER: Everyone has a Kerry Packer story, but you talk to businessmen who've dealt with him and they come out of meetings with him shellshocked because he has been so rude and so - so direct. And so scary, basically. He was this absolutely formidable personality. Give you nightmares!

RICHARD WALSH, PUBLISHER: Kerry was someone who, whether you liked it or not, you always knew what he thought. And that was sort of - that was very straightforward. Sometimes you didn't actually want to know what he thought because he would tell you. And that could be painful.

KERRY PACKER: Of course I am minimising my tax. And if anybody in this country doesn't minimise their tax, they want their heads read, because as a government, I can tell you you're not spending it that well that we should be donating extra!

EMMA ALBERICI: They say there are only two certainties in life - death and taxes. But Kerry Packer believed he could beat both. He returned from the dead in 1990 following a heart attack on the polo field, which left him without a pulse for six minutes.

KERRY PACKER: You want the good news or the bad news?

RAY MARTIN: Give us the good news.

KERRY PACKER: The good news is there is no devil. The bad news is there no heaven.

RAY MARTIN: Is that right?

KERRY PACKER: Yeah, there's nothing.

EMMA ALBERICI: To borrow a term from one of his own hit TV shows, Australia's richest man was the ultimate survivor. Outwitting, outplaying, and outlasting those in the television and magazine world. His fighting spirit, some would say bully tactics, the legacy of a harsh childhood.

ITA BUTTROSE, FORMER PUBLISHER: I don't think anyone, including Kerry, I might say, ever thought that he would be the success he has been, because he was considered...um...he was considered the dunce of the family, and he told me that his mother often called him stupid.

EMMA ALBERICI: Kerry Packer's mother Gretel bought her clothes in Paris, and returned them to that same city for dry cleaning, such as the moneyed environment they lived in. Frank Packer was a disciplinarian, fond of boxing ears in the home boxing ring.

MICHAEL COLLINS PERSSE, GEELONG GRAMMAR TEACHER: Kerry was a good member of the class. He was not good at writing. He suffered from what we now know as dyslexia, and that's public knowledge. But he was very good in discussion. He would give a good, honest account of himself. And say what he thought. I liked him.

EMMA ALBERICI: Kerry Packer learned his survival skills early. Sent to a boarding school at the age of five, just a year later, he developed a serious bout of polio, and spent nine months on a respirator. His studies suffered and he was pilloried by his father for his lack of academic achievement.

PAUL BARRY: I think he was bullied, unmercifully, by his father. People who are bullied tend to treat others the same way. The whole Packer organisation is one of bullying. It's one where is a fair degree of fear run through it over the years, where people who deal with Packer go out and deal with other people in the same way. So if you're down the bottom of that organisation, there's an awful lot of people on top of you being pretty unpleasant to you. And if you screw up, very little sympathy for that.

EMMA ALBERICI: Unofficial Kerry Packer biographer Paul Barry remembers a tough guy whose attitude to business stemmed from an obsessive-like desire to prove his father wrong about him. And as far as business savvy and creating wealth go, he did just that. Sir Frank Packer established the media empire in 1933, with the 'Women's Weekly' magazine. Its success provided the capital for an assault on newspapers, starting with Sydney's 'Daily Telegraph'. At 19, Kerry Packer finished school and went to work for the family's publishing business. Like his dad, he did nothing by halves. In Kerry Packer, you could have no better friend, or worse enemy.

ITA BUTTROSE: He was a very generous boss to work for, and he was also ... he was very generous to employees. If you went to see him about somebody that worked for the company and who might have had a sick wife or was struggling to pay some bills or - I know that we looked after people that had multiple sclerosis, things like that. Nothing was too much trouble.

EMMA ALBERICI: In 1956, ACP bought a television licence and TCN Nine became Australia's first TV broadcaster. In 1974, the year before the country's first colour transmission, Sir Frank Packer died, delivering the reins of the family business to Kerry Packer.

GIDEON HAIGH, CRICKET WRITER: I think that one of the most interesting things about Kerry Packer as a businessman is not just his ability to acquire things, but also to sell them. And he had great admiration for his father, who had sold the love of his life, the 'Daily Telegraph' in Sydney to Rupert Murdoch. And in 1987, Kerry Packer was made an offer that he couldn't refuse by Alan Bond for Channel Nine.

EMMA ALBERICI: Kerry Packer sold the Nine Network to Alan Bond for $1 billion, making him Australia's first billionaire. And three years later, in a stunning display of his corporate canniness, he bought it back for just a quarter of a billion, claiming you only get one Alan Bond in your lifetime.

ALAN BOND: He got the best of me.No doubt about that. He did a fantastic deal for himself.

EMMA ALBERICI: But life didn't always deal him such a fantastic set of cards. In the early 1980s, Kerry Packer was investigated by the Costigan Royal Commission for a range of criminal activities. After more than a year of intense scrutiny, he was cleared with a public apology from the Attorney-General.

PAUL BARRY: He wanted the Fairfax empire because there's this long animosity between the Fairfaxes and the Packers. Fairfaxes were seen as coming from the right end of town and the Packers from the wrong end of town. The Packers were seeing as being a bit coarse, a bit vulgar, a bit nouveau riche. There was that in the first place, and then in the 1980s, there as all the stuff with the 'National Times' and the 'Goanna' which was published in Fairfax papers. I think Packer wanted to wreak revenge for that.

EMMA ALBERICI: But the Parliament thought Kerry Packer already had too much control of the media. The Australian Broadcasting Authority launched an investigation in 1998, when a long-time chief executive of Packer's main company suddenly resigned and within hours joined the board of Fairfax.

KERRY PACKER: I am telling you, there is no arrangement. And I'm sick of telling people, there is no arrangement.

JOHN HOWARD, PM: He was a very generous, philanthropic person. And I know for a fact that many of his kindest and most generous and charitable deeds went unreported, unpublished, which is precisely how he wished it to be.

HAROLD MITCHELL, MEDIA BUYER: Inside, just the softest person. He was generous to people. We'll never know how generous Kerry Packer was to so many Australians.

EMMA ALBERICI: His loyalty inspired great loyalty in return. None more than from his long-time friend and helicopter pilot Nick Ross, who, in 2000, gave Kerry Packer the ultimate gift.

NICK ROSS, HELICOPTER PILOT: I consider myself very privileged to not only know him, but to actually be a friend. And I mean that sincerely. I gave Kerry the kidney for a number of reasons. He's had a rough bloody track, medically, all his life. Hasn't had a great deal of quality living in the last several years. I wanted to help him, and I could help him, so I did.

KERRY PACKER: I will be forever grateful. I mean, obviously. He saved my life.

EMMA ALBERICI: In 1998, as Kerry Packer's health began to give way, his son James was officially anointed his successor. A year later, the business began changing complexion, merging with Crown Casino, providing the company with a foray into gaming here and overseas.

HAROLD MITCHELL: James is an outstanding businessman. He has had to live at the time that Kerry Packer was larger than life, but James will come into his own.